The Savage Sword of Aragorn - The Hour of the Eye
by GracelessCharlatan
Summary: Aragorn the Arnorian, a mighty-thewed savage from the northern lands untrod by civilization for sixteen long generations, was destined to wear the winged crown of Gondor upon a troubled brow. Though he became a king by his own hand, Aragorn's adventures were not finished. After the disaster at Pelennor, the now exile Aragorn seeks to end the war through the death of the Dark Lord.


_"Know, oh thain, that between the years when the oceans drank Atalantë and the serene havens, and the years of last sailing of the Quendi, there was an Age undreamed of, when noble realms and hidden enclaves lay sprinkled across the desolation of the world like gems on a black velvet — Dale, Khand, Lindon, Dorwinion, Lothlórien with its gold-haired women and forests of elf-haunted mystery, Rohan with its chivalry, Umbar that bordered on the pastoral lands of Harad, Moria with its shadow-and-fire-guarded depths, Rhûn whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest realm of the world was Gondor, reigning supreme in the fading West. Hither came Aragorn, the Arnorian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a captain, a ranger, a healer, with brooding mien and veiled joys, to tread the jeweled rings of the Middle-earth under his high-booted feet."_

\- the Periandian Chronicles 

In the udûnian shadow skulked a tall man mightily shouldered and deep of chest, with a massive corded neck and heavily muscled limbs. He was clad in elven cloth, with the royal tree of Gondor worked in silver upon his rich jupon, and a star-jeweled diadem shone on his square-cut black mane; but the great sword at his side seemed more natural to him than the regal accouterments. His brow was low and broad, his eyes a mithril grey that smoldered as if with the last hint of the Wrath of the Uttermost West. His grim, scarred, careworn face was that of a fighting-man, and his velvet garments and silvery armour could not conceal the hard, dangerous lines of his limbs.

A most unwanted infiltrator though he was, no sentinel had detected his ascend to the heights of the dusky tower of Barad-dûr. He moved silently as a moonlit tiger's shadow, despite being weighted down by a thick Noldor-wrought hauberk that would have burdened a mere civilized man helplessly dilatory. The necessities of ranging the untamed and unforgiving northern marches ruined in the fall of Arnor had molded Aragorn, while intentionally furtive, unnoticeable save by the keenest of even immortal eyes. He moved to the foully carved balustrade and gazed down to the cavernous hall below.

The immense chamber was gloomly lit with fuming orc-tallow tapers on oliphaunt-bone candlesticks, and the high onyx walls were decorated with crimson tapestries of Rhûnish silk that had been defiled by golden embroidery in the uncouth shape of the lidless eye. No spot was completely saved from the touch of lavish jewelry. Aragorn would have sneered at the unnecessarily gaudy luxury, if his intense stare had not been focused on the occupiers of the opulent throne room.

On the central divan slouched a form, resembling a man of mighty stature, but deformed by an Age old treachery; Sauron, the sorcerous Dark Lord of Mordor. On every one of his nine thick talons was at least one ring of exquisite but infinitely sinister craftmanship. At his side cowered sable-clad and iron-crowned figure who the Arnorian knew too well: the Witch-King of thrice-cursed Angmar, who had been prophesied to be felled by no steel wielded by mortal men. On the dais with the malicious pair was a lithe woman of the palest complexion. Éowyn had been stripped from her habitual suit of burnished steel, leaving her near unclad and unprotected from the loathsome administrations of the Witch-King. Rage filled the Arnorian. Not out of love, for his heart had been given to another. It was not the rage of a King avenging his realm either, but the anger of a primal Man, unbroken by the lies of the Enemy, facing elemental injustice. He burned with wrath from someone so fair being in the clutches of something so vile, but also from the anger of seeing a fellow honest warrior brought down so low through deceit and trickery.

With a reckless bound he leaped over the railing, and his landing shattered the dark veiny marble of the floor.

"Lo, my lord, it is the Arnorian brute that would be ruler of all Men in thy place!" cried the Witch-King with an unpleasant shrill.

"Cast him down and let him receive the Gift of Men", commanded Sauron. The Witch-King let go of the chain tied to Éowyn and approached the Arnorian, who now wielded his icely shining sword in both of his burly hands. The Witch-King answered the challenge and unseathed his cruel sabre that was like a cursed flame of a lich-infested morass.

"Your drawn-out unlife is at its end, ghastly spirit", quoth Aragorn. "No necromancies will deliver you today from the Doom degreed to our kind."

The Witch-King screamed and lunged at Aragorn. The blow would have connected in any advesary whose reflexes hadn't been cultivated by the grim reality of life in the wilderness. The Arnorian dodged and stroke back, not with the training of a noble soldier, but with the instinctiveness of a panther. The Witch-King moved the blow away, but not without effort. He had the training of millennia, but Aragorn was the result of savagery of generations and the brutality of a long lifetime. Though in origin they were from the same race of Westernesse, Aragorn hadn't been brough up in a culture past its prime, made complacent and effeminate by the decadence allowed only to the most invincible of conquering nations. And in the still vigorous body of Aragorn, hardened by lifetime of struggle, the mighty Númenorean thews still retained their vital corporeality. But the Arnorian could not avail, as no matter how many times he cut through his foe, the Witch-King could not be ended. The reverse was all too untrue, and the morgul-blade shredded at Aragorn's armour until it was broken free from his shoulders and his leathery hide was exposed.

"Thou fool!" laughed the Witch-King and prepared for one final lethal strike. "No living man may defeat me!" At that moment Éowyn pulled her chains with the force that would have broken a stallion's neck, and freed her hands enough to clutch from the nearby stand the bewitched knife that had been utilized in the earlier nefarious tortures. With two hands she threw it in the back of the Witch-King, and with his next ferocious blow Aragorn rended the foul wraith permanently immaterial. Thus the prophecy was fulfilled, as no mortal hand had wielded the phantom-smithed blade at the moment it slayed the captain of the Nazgûl. The sword in Aragorn's hands shattered in the last shrieking cascade of unspeakable necromancy, and only smoking hilt was left in the Arnorian's hand.

"By the endless hells of Mandos!" cursed Aragorn and dropped his broken sword. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and straightened his frame in defiance of the Dark Lord. In the dim light of the throne room, he was like an tulkanean bronze statue of distilled martial valour.

Sauron stood up, slowly like an angbandian shadow masking a long-looked-for sunrise. Unveiled and uncoiled he was a manifestation less than man but infinitely more than a mere beast. He hit his massive hands on the floor and charged at Aragorn on four limbs like the most savage of the man-eating half-trolls of Far-Harad. Aragorn took out his poniard and braced all his strength for one desperate thrust that would deliver Mankind, or failing, doom Middle-earth to bitter thralldom.

As the mountain of fire and shadow was upon Aragorn, and the Arnorian stuck with all his desperate power. He felt the blade sink to the hilt in the flaming breast, and the erupting fire burned his hands. Aragorn ducked his head and bunched his whole body into one compact mass of knotted muscles, and drove his knee fiercely into Sauron's belly, bracing himself against that crushing grapple.

For one dizzy instant Aragorn felt as if he were being dismembered in the igneous grip of an erupting volcano and his hide was scorched by the fire of Sauron's body. Then suddenly Aragorn was free, sprawling on the floor, fuming both sweaty vapour and smoke from his seared flesh. He struggled to stand and saw beside him the Dark Lord gasping out his life, his terrible fire-engulfed eyes turned upward, the melting hilt of the poniard quivering in his breast. Aragorn's desperate stab had gone home.

The Arnorian was panting as if after long conflict, trembling in every limb. His frontside was burned deep into the skin and some of his joints felt as if they had been dislocated. His body was riddled with wounds of Sauron's talons that had been instantly cauterized by the branding heat. The Arnorian took out a wineskin and lustily drank the elven cordial miruvor within. Some of the strength returned to his limbs and, as if with the caress of the garden winds in Aman, the thought-numbing pain was soothed tolerable. Aragorn strode to the dais and helped Éowyn to break apart her chains.

"Thou came to deliver me!" cried Éowyn. She threw her white arms about the Arnorian's neck and held him tight.

"That indeed came to pass", answered Aragorn. "Now loose me! Only the serpent's head was cut today. There is still much for the King to do."

"No!" she gasped and tightened her grip. "I will not let thee go. Take me as thine own!"

"Though as the King I'm in position to alter the marital laws and marry more than once if it suited me, I have the matters of royal succession to consider. And with your fairness and good breeding it wouldn't suit you to become a mere addition to my seraglio."

"Then before we return to the dready power struggles and ever more grey matters of state, let our passions be entwined once here beyond the gazes of our peoples."

Aragorn grinned and he was willing, but the tower protested by trembling portentously, telling that celerity was of exigency for living mortals to exit the soon collapsing spire. 

Next up (possibly, but propably not) in The Savage Sword of Aragorn: **The Corsairs of Thorongil**

 _Note: Some passages were copied and then mangled from Robert E. Howard's works in public domain; The Phoenix in the Sword (opening narration) and The Hour of the Dragon (introductionary description and gorilla-Sauron fight). No rights are claimed._


End file.
